Harry Carey Jr., Sidekick to John Wayne, Dies at 91

(NYTimes) Harry Carey Jr., an actor who made his mark as a boyish sidekick to John Wayne in John Ford westerns like “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” (1949), “Wagon Master” (1950) and “The Searchers” (1956), and later became one of the most ubiquitous character actors in American television and movie westerns, died on Thursday in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 91. His family told Reuters he died of natural causes in a hospice. Mr. Carey was considered the last surviving member of a group known informally in Hollywood as the John Ford stock company, actors cast by that director in many of his best-known films. Besides Wayne, they included stars like Ward Bond, Henry Fonda and Victor McLaglen and dozens of lesser-knowns like Mr. Carey whose faces became as essential to the foreground of Ford’s westerns as buttes and mesas were to the background. Continued